Franconian Beer Message Board
The Umlaut in German |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2011-02-19 02:25:54 |
| The difference in the ability to soak in a new language between young and old is quite impressive. Cute 19 YO hotel chambermaids I teach (it's a tough job) have no trouble absorbing arbitrary differences in grammar between English and German, whereas with 45 YO Siemens engineers (for example), we have to repeat and repeat and repeat the same thing over and over. And then they might, sort of, understand. At least until the next lesson... The brain becomes more rigid with age. But I've heard that learning a language --even the attempt to learn one-- is a great defence against dementia. And it plain helps keep one young. And it burns calories. Same with learning a musical instrument. So get to work! This is also an argument in favo[u]r of retiring to Wales: We'd never really be able to learn the language, but could always try. And then there's the double challenge for us to learn proper English at the same time. And w.r.t. English speakers. I read somewhere years ago that about 66% of Germans are "functionally bilingual", meaning they can communicate in two languages to some functional level. Britons are at about half the rate, or around 33%, and guess where the Yanks are: yes, under 10%. (Incidentally the 66% of Germans was listed as being the highest rate in the EU! I can only imagine that the Beneluxers are disqualified since 95% them at least TRI-lingual.) People over here seem surprised to learn that there's generally no requirement to learn a foreign language in US public schools. But then why should there be one? And just this morning a British cooking show (Duet?) ran on tv here, dubbed into German of course. An English lady cook traveled around the world meeting famous cooks in other countries. The other cooks seemed to speak English clearly enough (at least as far as I could tell, listening through the dubbing), but yet there were English subtitles when they spoke, as if the producer was afraid the viewers wouldn't be able to understand English spoken with, say, a French or Indian accent. Not sure what to make of that. |